For those of us who teach about gentrification, I cannot imagine a better resource than My Brooklyn. Anyone who cares about real cities, and real rights to the city, needs to get their hands on a copy of My Brooklyn.

My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson's journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Fulton Mall, a bustling African-American and Caribbean commercial district that - despite its status as the third most profitable shopping area in New York City - is maligned for its inability to appeal to the affluent residents who have come to live around it. As a hundred small businesses are replaced by high rise luxury housing and chain retail, Anderson uncovers the web of global corporations, politicians and secretive public-private partnerships that drive seemingly natural neighborhood change. The film's ultimate question is increasingly relevant on a global scale: who has a right to live in cities and determine their future?

Reviews

Anderson’s sensitive study of gentrification … traces a tale of aggressive rezoning, multimilliondollar development deals and racial displacement. The history of the American city is in itself one of cyclical displacement, but here the apparent lack of transparency and official callousness are especially troubling.

A great pedagogical tool. It can't help but provoke informed discussion on the hot everyday issues of living in a changing city.

Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University

My Brooklyn provides an excellent analysis of gentrification, using personal reflections, historical background and a look at the complex process of public policy making. It is a powerful tool for sparking discussion and debate.

Tom Angotti, Professor of Urban Planning, Hunter College

My Brooklyn is persuasive in making the case that gentrification was, is, and continues to be even more racially motivated and systematic than conventional wisdom suggests.

My Brooklyn has changed the narrative discourse on gentrification and development in New York City. It has made the gentrifier self-aware, and the long time resident empowered to stake claim.

Lenina Nadal, Communications Director, Right to the City Alliance

How does gentrification change the character, commerce, and culture of an urban area? My Brooklyn answers these often disturbing and confusing questions. This excellent documentary is chock-full of captivating stories and straight-no-chaser analysis of how profit motive and class warfare in favor of wealthy people trumps the interests of the working and middle classes. This film's depictions of where democracy in the new New York is headed may be hard to swallow, but political movements for social and economic fairness are impossible without learning and discussing what the filmmakers captured in My Brooklyn.

Brian Purcell, Professor of Africana Studies, Bowdoin College

My Brooklyn is an emotional and visually rich account of the eviction of blacks and immigrants from the heart of Brooklyn. The film challenges us to look beneath the gloss of gentrification that overtakes so many cities today to trace the winners and losers of urban redevelopment.

Sharon Zukin, Prof. of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center

This is an extraordinary film, not only about Brooklyn but about the new America, the rise of the corporate state and the losses people are experiencing in so many corners of life. I was deeply moved, and Kelly Anderson's personal narration shatters the barrier that can separate the filmmaker from her audience.

Stuart Ewen, Distinguished Professor of History, CUNY Graduate Center

Striking a fine balance between personal journal and political expose Kelly Anderson's docu examines the unnatural causes of changes wrought in Brooklyn neighborhoods due to gentrification … this absorbing pic eschews militant outrage for a quietly devastating look at social commodification.

At first "My Brooklyn” looks like the kind of studious documentary that well-meaning liberals put audiences to sleep with. By the end, though, it’s likely to have viewers boiling… [Anderson and Dean] explode the comforting idea that the gentrification changing downtown Brooklyn is just an organic process of some people moving in and others moving out.